


Pearl, Rose and the Great Comet of 1922

by perbe



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: F/F, Pearl is kind of a modernist, The Roaring 20s, a city that's loosely based on new york, and a comet, mutual misunderstandings, so many misunderstandings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-24
Updated: 2017-08-24
Packaged: 2018-12-19 13:34:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11898810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perbe/pseuds/perbe
Summary: Later, much later, S. will tell you, “She must have loved you very much,” and you will remember the screaming insects and the comet and that creeping smog, and –Maybe, maybe, maybe.





	Pearl, Rose and the Great Comet of 1922

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sturmfreii](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sturmfreii/gifts).



ONE.

You come to call it the Wasteland, but that isn’t entirely accurate. In the moonlight, the fog is an ocean. Every so often, you pass a plot of earth where dandelions and shrubs stubbornly cling to life.  

There is Rose. She thinks the city is charming. On these excursions, she spends days exploring the cafes, delis, and bodegas. She comes to love the smell of motor-oil coffee and the morning madness and evening rush in the subways. She even loves the creeping yellow smog. The way it hugs the cobblestone, she says, tickles. So, you read through the Midtown Library, memorize streets and avenues and speakeasies, remember dates and fun facts until you’re a veritable tour guide. And she and you cross the river on the ferry, and slip through the West Egg’s parties and graffiti as the night hums dully – a giant, throbbing beehive.

“It’s overpopulation,” you tell her. “Infested with disease. Consumption. Influenza. Excretion everywhere, bad drainage systems, _unsanitary insects_ – ”

But she’s looking at the saxophone player on the corner of 2nd and 23rd. He’s riffing up and down the B flat scale, face blotchy even this late at night. His hat is empty.

Rose walks toward him, her feet shuffling in what you recognize as the dance of the year. Neither of you have money, but he smiles at her all the same. He’s old, you notice. The shadows don’t quite settle across his features.

“You play beautifully,” Rose tells him when he stops.

“And you dance beautifully,” he says. 

You look away.

And the night goes on humming (the stock market boom, the parties, the train overhead, sleepy and vainglorious and going nowhere, nowhere), like bees.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TWO.

The worst are the days when you can almost feel the rain sticking to your feet. The remnants of industrialization are viscous, hanging heavily in the air or pooling in oil-topped puddles in the morning.

“Human progress is dirty,” you explain. “They excavate poisons from inside the Earth to feed their machines and release greenhouse gases into the air. One day, they will choke on their own arrogance.”

Rose laughs. “There’s really nothing you like about them?”

You think about the dissolution of serfdoms, the advancement of medicine and science – history winding itself down to dust – and wonder that anything can stand to be so weak. Theirs must be a sad existence. Breathing in charcoal, pumping toxins into their bloodstream, all the while hoping that something might last in this glittering city – no, you can think of nothing worse. But you can tell that’s not the answer Rose wants to hear. It’s been centuries since you’ve started coming with her on these excursions, and maybe you _should_ change. 

Still, each time she asks, all you can remember are her feet flashing to this new thing called swing, and the wind in her hair. You think she knows this. You think that’s why she hasn’t stopped inviting you, or really tried to convince you to think differently. Regardless, you can’t quite meet her eyes. “They don’t even like each other.” 

Her eyes soften, and she stops walking. She is dusky in midnight. There’s a curl of fog around her head; for a moment, you forget –

Then she says, “Oh, Pearl. Pearl, not everyone is like you.”

You can tell that odd blue is spreading across your cheeks (again). Of course, you’re an anomaly. She tells you this sometimes, always in that same wonderingly quiet voice. “What do you mean?”

“Just that,” Rose says, and by this time it’s habit for the two of you to fall into step. “Can’t you see how wonderful you are? Not everyone can learn as quickly as you did. And for humans, it’s even harder. They live such incredibly short lives. There’s barely any time to change at all.”

“O-oh.”

You walk in silence for the next ten, twenty blocks. The streets are deserted. Perhaps because of the waning moon and the fog, the shadows have taken on a blueish tinge. It is building after building, street after street imbued with a familiar sense of absence. When you smile, she beams back.

(Sometimes, you even believe it.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THREE.

Then there are the nights where you forget. The world is a shimmering swirl of sequins, heels, and music, and you forget if it’s this city or that continent; post-war, everyone is desperate to prove that they are alive with bow-legged dance steps and moonshine. Rose pulls you to the center of the dance hall, laughing. Her eyes are bright, and the tasseled skirt she bought yesterday swings wildly as she moves. There’s a flush high on her cheeks as she says, “Dance! Pearl, dance with me!”

You fiddle with your tie, feigning hesitation. You think you might be giggling, but you resolve to regret it later. “I don’t know, Rose… I haven’t learned all the steps.”  

“You do! You do, I saw you yesterday.”

“You’re better.”

Rose seems to be giggling too. “Come on. Let’s show them how it’s done.”

You place your hands on her arms. You wonder if she can feel you shiver. Maybe you should think of an excuse. “Let’s do it.” 

It is madness. You turn to promenade in a sprawling, gyrating mess, the music pressing its pulse against your feet. 

Then, it’s one-two-three, back step until dawn, like the time before, and before that, and before that. Before now it was the waltz, the foxtrot, ballet. And before even that, it was you and Rose dancing to songs that are lost to history. Here and now, her hair is escaping from its confines, and she looks at you like candlelight as her lips shape soundless words.

You laugh. 

One-two-three, back step. One, two, three –

You and Rose walking down the street hand in hand, the distance between you closed at last. Rose wigging her fingers at you after a mission and her quiet laughter as you sneak down the stairs. Just the two of you mapping out the world. You could rewrite history with all you know, each fall of an empire is Rose against the sunset. This war was her head on your shoulder, your arms wrapped tight around her waist. Ideas and hypotheses about the end of eras as late night conversations. You almost want her to ask you again: _there’s really nothing you like about them?_  

“This is my favorite one yet,” she tells you, barely audible above the music. “We’re coming back again, aren’t we?” 

You say, “The dance?”

Rose dips you, which isn’t quite right, but then again, she’s never been one for following rules. Besides, you’re both laughing. And your noses are pressed against each other, and the music is so loud that your skin tingles. 

Suddenly, you’re both tingling, raising your arms above your head as you dance. You draw closer, eyes shut. Then: sound and sight blur together, and it’s almost with relief that you look out of four eyes instead of two.

“It’s – it’s a monster!”

“Get me out of here! Get me out of here!”

Screams all around: humans have never been good at handling Rainbow Quartz, who is wildness and control, impulse and calculation in one. She keeps dancing as the crowd rushes to the doors, the bright notes of the saxophone scattering in odd directions as the band realizes what’s happened. 

Tables fall. Chairs crash. One hundred pairs of legs tangle in each other as they strain to escape. In the chaos, someone throws a glass at her. It lands at her feet and she looks down, amused. It is tiny, tinier than when it’s just Rose and Pearl. It is not quite the shot heard around the world, but the crowd pushes to the doors with renewed urgency and spills into the city. Humanity is as shocking in its innovation as always.

(Be kind.) 

(They are afraid of us.)

Then, she is alone under the chandeliers. There are little pieces of glass, or maybe refractions scattered across the floor. It is nearly impossible to tell. Rainbow Quartz crosses her arms. She should leave before the humans are back. And it’s easy enough to slip through the windows and run into the street, and then keep running, the fog spreading wearing itself to nothing under her feet as the avenues blur into streets into the other side of the river. West Egg is nothing but flickering lights far behind, and there is champagne on her skirt.

She stops at a vacant park. It is a summer of katydids, and they litter the ground, their pale bodies darting among the wilting grass. She sits. It is the summer of katydids and it smells like rotting leaves. Rainbow Quartz lifts her knees to her chin. It’s hard remembering that humans don’t understand.

(Neither did the Diamonds.)

And then you’re looking at Rose, feeling far too small. You touch place your hands over hers. “Rose, Rose are you alright? They don’t understand. That’s why they’re frightened. They’re so close-minded.”

She looks at you with searching eyes. But she says nothing. 

“I should have realized,” you start.

“I’ve been unfair to you,” Rose says.

“What? No! Never!” The idea is so wrong that you stand, letting go of Rose so that you can wring your hands. “No, no – Rose, why would you say that? You’re _wonderful_ , and of course I’d think so.” It isn’t a secret. 

Rose peers up at you from beneath her lashes. The concept is so strange that you sit down again. Your hands dance, restless, over the grass, tangling its wilting ends together with the scattered dandelions. She blinks slowly. “So are you.”

That’s not new either. Only, only.

The katydids are screaming murder.

At last, she says, “You are, you know.” 

You have seen her in war, have seen the sun dying her hair red in mornings spent in the desert. There are no secrets. There can’t be. You know her thoughts almost as well as your own. (You should, for all the nights you drown in them.) But the katydids are screaming murder, and all you remember is the winter of 1918 – those nights spent walking through the leftover trenches and minefields and ashy snow. And all the same, you know that you have missed something essential. The dandelion you’re twirling comes apart in your hands. “I’m trying. I think I do, sometimes. I think I almost believe you, sometimes.” You laugh to fill in the space. “Scientifically, you’re biased.”

“Pearl.”

“Yes?”

She has your hand in hers. “Sometimes, I wonder if you resent me at all.” 

Unwittingly, you’ve tightened your grip around hers, as if a small, insignificant action will squeeze the idea from her. “Why would I?” 

“You dislike most human things,” she says. It sounds whimsical. You don’t know. “You must miss the Homeworld, sometimes.”

“I have you! I’m learning, I’m…”

A laugh that’s not a laugh at all. “I appreciate everything you tell me, but you…”

“It’s what Pearls _do_. We know the small things. I know the small things.”

“What about you?”

You don’t answer. You feel guilty, but you don’t know for what.

She lets go of your hand, disappointed. She says, “You could, but I can’t wait forever.”

Maybe you’re afraid. Where was this in the fusion? Wasn’t everything – wasn’t it? “What? What are you saying?” 

Rose smiles. “You know what I mean. Let’s go home.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FOUR.

Here is how you remember the city: a comet splashed across the sky, its tail spilling into candle-flame, or maybe feathers, racing into the future without a second thought. Here is how you remember the city: Rose and you walking hand in hand, her nose pressing against several windowpanes as she inspects the pickings of Lower East Side. She pauses by a jeweler’s, smiles, and tugs you closer.

It is the end of an era.

Later, much later, S. will tell you, “She must have loved you very much,” and you will remember the screaming insects and the comet and that creeping smog, and –

 

 

 

 

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
